Indicia applied permanently to articles of clothing and other textiles have become very popular. Fanciful indicia, such as logos, slogans, college names, sports team names and sayings, are now commonplace. As a result, screen printing has become very popular. Large, commercial operations screen printing textiles are common today.
Indicia can be one or more colors. Typically, a screen printing machine has at least one station for each color employed. For example, a design incorporating two colors will have at least two printing stations, one for each color. A design employing eight colors will have at least eight stations. Each station generally includes a printing head, which supports a single screen, the ink to be used at that station and a mechanism for applying the ink to the textile. Each color is carried by a single screen. The textile to be screened travels from printing station to printing station by one of a number of methods, such as a chain or a rigid arm. The textile is usually carried by a metal pallet, pallet support, flat bed, or platen. Common printing machines include turret, oval and linear. In addition to printing stations, there may also be curing stations to heat and set the inks placed on the textile or substrate.
In both the linear and oval style printing machines, the pallet carrying the textile to be printed upon travels via a chain on a track or rail from station to station. In the turret or carrousel style printing machine, a center section has a plurality of spider arms. Generally, there are two levels of spider arms, namely, an upper level carrying the printing heads and screens or the curing assemblies, and a lower level carrying the pallet with the textile to be printed upon. Either the lower pallet/textile arms rotate with respect to the printing/curing arms or the printing/curing arms rotate relative to the pallet/textile arms. The stationary arms are commonly referred to as "stations."
The travelling arm moves from station to station. Specifically, each moving arm is indexed and registered at a station, the station's function, be it printing or curing, performed and the arm moves to the next station.
For clarity, the discussion following will focus on one configuration, that being stationary upper arms supporting printing heads or curing units, with the lower arms supporting the pallets and textiles travelling. It is appreciated this configuration can be different, e.g., stationary pallet/textile stations and travelling printing/curing arms. The teachings of this disclosure work well in any of the configurations.
One highly successful machine of the type just noted is manufactured and sold by M&R PRINTING EQUIPMENT, INC. ("M&R"), Glen Ellyn, Ill. as the GAUNTLET.TM. Series Automatic Textile Printing Machines. Patented innovations include, among other things, an AUTOMATIC SCREEN REGISTRATION DEVICE AND METHOD THEREFOR, U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,155; an ARTICLE DETECTOR FOR PRINTING PRESS, U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,400; and a SEQUENCING SYSTEM FOR PRINTING MACHINE, U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,113.
The present innovation may also be employed in other machines, such as M&R's CHALLENGER.TM. Series Automatic Textile Printing Machines.
Unfortunately, one drawback of this and other similar machines is the size. The diameter across the assembled machine is generally between 12 and 14 feet, depending on the number of stations. This is also the minimum required floor space necessary to store and transport an assembled machine. One method of freeing floor space and reducing transporting size of the machine is to disassemble and reassemble the machine each time the machine is either stored and in non-use or transported. This can be both time-consuming and costly.
The present invention involves another technique, namely, folding the machine to a smaller diameter. However, this, too, can be difficult as the machine is both heavy and incorporates significant structural components, as well as very fine, precise components. Accordingly, the advancement discussed herein resulted from a redesign of the machine to permit ease of folding and unfolding, without affecting the strength of the machine, the operation of the machine, and the precise tuning of the machine.